Tag: Community Development
The Law Centre
The story of NI's Law Centres
The Law Centre NI was set up in the early 1970s by a dedicated group of solicitors to help those who suffered social inequalities. “It was about using the law as one aspect of a much broader campaign involving tena...
Helen Bell
Tales from the lower Shankill
Born in 1947 in Hopewell Street at the bottom of the Shankill Road, Helen remembers the late 1960s and the first time that real “trouble” started on the Shankill Road, with rioting and flares being shot into the air....
Annie Armstrong
Tales from lower Springfield
Annie grew up in the lower Springfield area of west Belfast, a working class area of factories and mills, one of which was James Mackie & Sons or Mackies as they were known locally, a textile machinery and enginee...
May Blood
Talking with Baroness Blood
May was born during World War Two and grew up in Roden Street, a mixed area of Belfast with her mother and sister. He family was separated due to the evacuations during the war. “For the first six years of my life I t...
Joe Baker
Memories of New Lodge
Joe grew up on the New Lodge estate in north Belfast. “When we moved into it, it was a construction site, everything was brand new and spic and span. It was a lot of adventure and a lot of fun playing on the buildi...
Roisin McGlone
Life as a Falls community worker
“The Troubles began at the time we moved up to Andersonstown from the Falls Road. My lasting memory is the raids, whenever the army and police came. This would be before Ulsterisation. They closed off streets and sea...
Mike Maloney
From Australia to Belfast
Mike was brought up in Australia. His family, which is of Irish extraction, moved many times and he recalls going to nine different schools and living in seven different houses. His father’s love of writing and journa...
Joseph Ricketts
To Belfast from Jamaica
Born and raised in Jamaica, Joseph’s father was a contractor who believed his sons should be responsible for their own land and be able to manage work on a farm. When they came of age, Joseph and his three brothers ha...
Mina Wardle
Talking to the community activist
Mina’s father was an engineer on RMS Queen Mary, her mother suffered from arthritis. Mina passed her 11+ and was awarded a place at Grammar School but at 15 years, her parents could no longer afford to keep her at the...
WRDA Lectures – Baroness May Blood
Factory floor to the House of Lords
The inaugural lecture of the Anna Eggert lecture series, organised by the WRDA. Baroness May Blood was the speaker for the afternoon and delivered a biographical lecture entitled “From the factory floor to the House ...
Tommy Wilson
Building the Empire Community Centre
Tommy Wilson grew up on the Donegall Road in the Village area of Belfast. “We had nowhere to go, we had to run the streets. The place where I lived was just housing and there were no green spots whatsoever to play gam...
Tura Arutura
Talking with the founder of Artfrique
Tura grew up in Chitungwiza in Zimbabwe during the pre-war period. He recalls it as being a “very colourful beautiful country. Very warm, very hot, it also reflects the nature of the people as well. They wear their he...